Eve Van Engel kisses Dempsey, a cat available for adoption, at the Paws 2 Help office in West Palm Beach on July 14, 2017. (Richard Graulich / The Palm Beach Post)

Eve Van Engel, the driving force behind the Paws 2 Help nonprofit veterinary clinics, has died, her son confirmed Wednesday.

She died Sunday at 76 at her home in suburban West Palm Beach, Lee Van Engel said.

“It was unexpected,” he said. He said the family is waiting to learn a cause of death.

Paws 2 Help, founded in 1995, serves as a vet of last resort to thousands of needy pet owners at its main campus in Palm Springs and at a second site in Jupiter.

“We get our rewards every day, when we see the gratitude of these poor animals,” Eve Van Engel said on the outfit’s webpage.

The clinics mostly limits their services to spaying and neutering and target low-income pet owners.

“Our ultimate goal is no unwanted, homeless or abused companion animals,” its mission statement says. “We endeavor to make basic veterinary care available to ALL pets in need, regardless of their owner’s ability to pay.”

Van Engel was born Pearl Evelyn Harvey in World War II in Oxford, England, and waited out the Blitz in her mother’s native Ireland. Her father was a prisoner of war in Germany for several years.

She acquired the last name “Van Engel” through her first marriage and began going by “Eve,” a shortened version of her middle name.

She said she first came to Florida decades ago for vacations, decided to stay and eventually focused her passion on neglected animals.

“Some people are very cautious and don’t usually get very far. I’m not. I’m an adventurer and a risk-taker. That’s why we’ve got where we are. I work from the gut,” she told The Palm Beach Post in August.

In 1995, Van Engel founded Paws 2 Help with retired veterinarian Elton Gissendanner III, who had been secretary of the Florida Department of Natural Resources under Gov. Bob Graham. It started as a thrift store to raise money for neglected animals.

Van Engel and Gissendanner set up the first Paws 2 Help clinic on 25th Street in West Palm Beach in 1997.

She quickly would become the public face of Paws 2 Help, often turning to the media either for fund-raising help or to call attention to abused or neglected animals brought to the clinic. She once spent a month living in a dumpster to call attention to the number of dogs and cats euthanized in Palm Beach County.

“Paws” struggled on meager donations. Eminent-domain proceedings and zoning issues forced the clinic to move to different locations, including a trailer powered by a generator in a Salvation Army parking lot on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach.

“Every time we got pushed out, we just shook the dust off, licked our wounds and just kept on going, determined to make a difference for needy animals,” Van Engel said in August.

During the recession, as cash-strapped pet owners looked for cheaper options, Paws started to take off. In 2009, it generated $405,000 in revenue. By 2015 it had grown tenfold to an estimated $3.98 million. Only 1 percent of the money came from donations, tax records show.

“We’re known as the $15 vet,” Van Engel said, citing the fee for basic exams and vaccinations — much cheaper than what a private vet charges.

Paws 2 Help employs seven vets at its two clinics, generating nearly $4 million a year in revenue.

It came under scrutiny, and Van Engel and Gissendanner had a public falling-out, when the Internal Revenue Service in 2016 questioned spending and record-keeping.

The IRS would fine Van Engel $3,100 after the audit showed she improperly used in 2014 a Paws 2 Help debit card, linked to the clinic’s donation money, to pay for personal meals and for $12,000 in dental work.

The IRS also raised questions about Van Engel’s personal use of a Paws-owned house in the Westgate area of suburban West Palm Beach and the use of Paws money to lease-purchase four Mercedes-Benz cars that were given to three Paws veterinarians and the wife of one of the vets. Van Engel later paid back the money and worked to resolve the rest of the issues.

This year, Van Engel obtained a green card, which would allow her to legally live and work in the United States. She had lived in Florida for 30 years as an undocumented immigrant. And in January, she was married in Hobe Sound to Lloyd Joe Fisher, 74, . It was the third marriage for Van Engel, who said she met Fisher years earlier when he was working for a dog-rescue group.

Eve Van Engel is survived by her husband and her son Lee, of London, and four grandchildren. She will be cremated without a service, her son said, but a “celebration of life” is planned soon for a park.